


Reunion

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Future Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gatehouse Ami & Fat Walda reunite after the War of the Five Kings.  An exploration of Disappointment & Denial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

When Ami comes to the Dreadfort, it is not a joyous reunion. She brings the bitterness that has grown around her like a mass of vines, thorn-encrusted, into her sister’s house. And while her misery is sorely justified, it has eroded her heart like one of the leeches that Walda’s husband is so fond of, sucking dry all of her youth and gaiety, leaving a tired, careworn, and miserable woman. As her eyes take in the other girl’s simple finery and placid features, she feels something further than the hatred that she’d expected. She feels nothing but disappointment. 

But Walda embraces her without qualm, welcoming her into her home, strange as it is, and Ami is almost able to forget the dark feelings that gnaw at her. And even though her little sister is still the same sweet, gentle girl that she’d been, the cool manners that she’s been taught at Lord Bolton’s hands and the authoritative way that she walks about, giving gentle yet firm orders to maids and stewards, only serve to remind Ami of her fallen position. Not that they’d been that high to begin with, being nothing but drunk old Merritt Frey’s daughters, stunted branches on a sprawling tree. 

She bites back her words as they sip tea and nibble tarts. Walda’s curbed her gluttonous nature and although she eats her fair share, is delicate, subtle almost, as she goes about it, and her conversation is measured, asking Ami about the journey, the weather, precious inanities. Ami wants to scream, _What of the war? Father, hanged from a tree? Little Walder, dead?_ , the details surrounding those events too monstrous to repeat in such an orderly setting. After some twenty minutes of this, her control slips and she spoils it all, almost gleefully. 

“What a fine pair we make,” she says drily, enjoying the puzzled expression on her sister’s open features. 

Walda smiles then, politely. “If you say,” and she giggles nervously. It enrages Ami, although she does not permit the fury to show on her face. 

Ami thinks then of Lancel, his outrageous piety and how he’d cast her from his bed when he’d found the Faith, his reaction that of horror when he’d inevitably caught her fucking the steward, the stableboys, how he’d pushed her to her knees in the yard and forced her to beg forgiveness of gods she’d long since abandoned, all their passion, if there was any at all, withered, blackened. And she thinks of his ruin, burned and scarred, the golden beauty obliterated, ivory and gold turned to brittle clay and tin, sacrificed to a war that has done nothing but add to her misery. 

It had hurt the most when he’d left her for the sept. She’d wanted threats, rage, blows, but instead she found ambivalence.

She’d hoped that Walda was just as miserable, her husband an old man, an odd sort, a butcher really, if the rumors are to be believed, but the reality, in its way, is just another disappointment.

“I, married to a septon,” she continued, “and you, to a monster.” Ami smiles, but her eyes are cold. 

They grow colder when Walda sees her out, her sister’s face hard.

*

She weeps in her husband’s arms that evening. It’s all been too much. Her little brother is dead. Her mother and younger sister are gods-know-where, Walda doesn’t know. And now Ami returns, broken, with nothing but misery and bitterness. Considering all that they’ve been through, Walda had hoped that they could have been friends, comrades under a common cause, that of survival. After all, she’s seen the worse, been to the edge of doom, but somehow has been pulled back from that precipice, without really losing her innocence. At least, that is what Walda believes, and what she must believe, in order to live with herself. 

Nothing that Roose tries consoles her. He sends for tarts and cakes, all of the sweet little delicacies that Walda so loves to indulge in, but Ami’s cruel remarks stick in her throat, and she’s unable to get them down. It helps a bit when his arms go around her and he strokes her hair, but the vague affection only serves to make her cry harder, wondering if Ami is right, if he is just a monster, and she a fool. 

“You must calm yourself, wife,” he says softly, yet insistently. She’s trembling in his arms. 

Slowly, her tears taper off and she’s able to speak steadily again. Pulling back a bit, looking Roose full in the face, the defiance flashes across her face. 

“How can anyone call you a monster,” she sighs, kissing him softly on the cheek, “when you’re so good to me?”

He doesn’t respond, but he kisses her back, on the mouth, silencing her outburst. 

“Monsters,” Walda murmurs, relaxing a bit as Roose’s hands toy with the laces on her gown, “don’t comfort their wives.” As he pulls the dress down around her shoulders, he bends his head to her bosom, where he will kiss and and nip the soft flesh. “Nor do they pleasure their wives,” she continues, as his lips, slightly cold, brush her flushed skin, her breath quickening. 

“Be still,” he replies, voice muffled, although it is not unkind. “Her misery does not concern us.” 

Walda relents then, her hands in his hair. “I ought to know better,” she whispers, her words coming sharp as his teeth find purchase. She finds that night, that with enough coercing, enough petting and kissing and what inevitably follows, that she can almost forget. But not quite.


End file.
